Giving women a voice: the Supreme Court and the STUC
At the STUC of 1925, a resolution was passed, put forward by Glasgow District Trades Council, to the effect that all unions should admit women, and should accord them equal status with male members in respect both of ‘privileges and responsibilities’. It also urged that unions ‘should support with their whole strength’ the women’s demand for ‘equal pay for similar duties’. In January 1926 the first STUC women’s conference was held, and the General Council itself proposed that the Organization of Women Committee should be composed… A second conference was held in September 1926 and the Organization of Women Committee duly elected… Both the conference and the committee (now renamed the Women’s Advisory Committee) have remained in existence till the present day.
Breitenbach, E. (1981). A Comparative Study of the Women’s Trade Union Conference and the Scottish Women’s Trade Union Conference. Feminist Review, 7, 65–86.
Introduction
The Scottish Trades Union Congress (STUC) was founded in 1897. Its stated purpose is to co-ordinate, develop and articulate the views and policies of the Trade Union Movement in Scotland.
In January 1926, the STUC held its first Women’s Conference and established the Women’s Committee (known as the ‘Organization of Women Committee) later that year.
Almost a century later, neither the STUC Women’s Committee nor the Women’s Conference have voting rights at Annual Congress, the governing body of the STUC. Neither one can submit motions to Congress.
This is in contrast to the LGBT+, Black, Disabled and Youth Worker Conferences, which under the STUC Constitution (pages 45-53), have voting rights at Congress and can submit motions. LGBT+ Workers, Black Workers, Disabled Workers and Youth Workers also have reserved seats on the General Council.
At this year’s Annual Congress, delegates voted against a block of amendments to the STUC Constitution. Had this passed, it would have provided the Women’s Committee with voting rights at Congress and the right to submit motions.
Later that day, delegates carried an emergency amalgamated motion, lodged by the University and College Union, and STUC LGBT+ Workers Committee. This critiqued the recent UK Supreme Court judgment, which put beyond doubt that ‘sex’ in the Equality Act 2010 refers to biological sex, thereby clarifying key rights and protections for women.
…The right-wing media and politicians have welcomed the ruling as a victory and the ruling is likely to lead to more trans-exclusionary decisions being made by public bodies, employers and other institutions and organisations…
Legal Protection for Gender Identity and Trans Rights
Mover: STUC LGBT+ Workers Committee, Seconder: University and College Union, 30 April 2025.
Against the backdrop of the Supreme Court ruling, this blog looks at the status of the STUC Women’s Committee and Women’s Conference, and how the Women’s Committee views the debate on sex and gender identity. We also look at wider STUC policy, and the STUC relationship with the Scottish Government.
Whilst STUC Congress continues to defend gender self-identification, the recent judgment from the Supreme Court confirms that this position has no basis in law. Advice to employers advocating policies and practices based on self-ID can therefore be expected to put organisations at financial and legal risk. Within the STUC there is clear evidence of disagreement on this issue, particularly among Women’s Conference delegates.
We argue that the vote on the STUC Constitution brings home that a century of activism can still leave women disadvantaged in organisations that claim to be speaking for them. We suggest that that vote, and the STUC’s reaction to the Supreme Court judgment, should be seen as a watershed moment in the history of women in the trades union movement in Scotland, and prompt wider scrutiny of how effectively the STUC listens to the half of the population who are most likely to be in low paid, insecure work, and who need its help most.
STUC Women’s Committee and Women’s Conference
The STUC Women’s Committee leads on campaigns and policy for women trade union members in Scotland. The Committee is elected at STUC Women’s Conference.
The Committee can have up to 18 members.1 According to the STUC website,2 it currently has nine. Most are nominees of individual trades unions, but up to two can be nominated by local trade union councils. The maximum number of women a union can have on the Committee is related to how many women members it has.3 If there are more nominations than places, then an election takes place at the Women’s Conference.4 Membership of the Committee therefore depends on individual unions choosing to put forward members.
At present, the Committee has one member each from Community, NASUWT, EIS, GMB, UNITE, the Pharmacists Defence Association, the Communication Workers’ Union, and the Glasgow and Aberdeen Trades Union Councils.5 It therefore appears that several unions with a large, even predominantly, female membership, did not nominate members at the last Conference: UNISON is an obvious example.
Annual Congress and General Council
As noted above, Annual Congress is the governing body, responsible for setting STUC policy and holding the General Council to account. Congress consists of delegates from affiliated Trades Unions, who are allocated votes proportionate to membership size. Three votes are allocated to the Trades Union Councils. A further six votes are allocated each to ‘Young Workers’, ‘Disabled Workers’, ‘LGBT+ Workers’, and ‘Black Workers’ (STUC Constitution rules 21 and 24).
The General Council is responsible for policy implementation. It has 38 members, elected at Annual Congress, with reserved seats for the affiliated Trades Unions and Trades Union Councils. A further two seats are reserved each for Youth Workers, Black Workers, Disabled Workers and LGBT+ Workers (rule 6).
What about women?
Neither the Woman’s Conference nor the Women’s Committee are represented on the General Council, even though they predate the other equality groups by a considerable margin.6 Neither one has voting rights at Congress, nor can they submit motions to Congress. The opportunity to (partly) redress this at the 2025 Annual Congress was not taken.7
Quotas for women
Some General Council places are reserved for women, but not in their own right, organising as women. Instead, places for women are reserved on the basis of representing a particular union or another characteristic. For example, of the 28 seats allocated to affiliated Trades Unions, 12 must be held by women. Similarly, of the two seats allocated to LGBT+ Workers, one must be for a (self-described) LGBT+ woman.8 The same applies to the other equality characteristics.
The existence of these quotas may be seen as the reason as why women do not need the same rights as the other groups which are given reserved seats and votes. But this is not a sufficient rationale. Even if these places were confined to female trade unionists (and they are not, as long as the STUC defines women based on gender self-identification rather than sex) all they do is ensure that people drawn from the female half of the population occupy at least 45% of the places. They do not substitute for women being able to organise and influence the STUC as women, rather than as representatives of other interests, who happen to be female.
What is the STUC Women’s Committee position on sex and gender
The Women’s Committee has stated its support for gender self-identification and trans-inclusive policies, although there is not a consensus among Women’s Conference delegates.
This tension came to the fore at the 2021 Annual Women’s Conference, at which Paisley & District Trades Union Council put forward a motion to support the protection of single-sex services for women and girls in women’s frontline services.
In response, the Women’s Committee issued a statement recommending that delegates oppose the motion. As Susan Dalgety explains:
The STUC’s Women’s Committee recommended delegates should oppose the motion, and in an attempt to defend its position, issued a statement where the ‘sisters’ argued that the discussion about who should have access to single sex spaces has “evolved” in recent years.
It emphasised the STUC’s support for Self ID, and reminded delegates that the STUC’s Women’s Committee is committed to addressing “the issue of transgender equality.”
However, the statement did not make a similar explicit commitment to addressing the issue of equality for women and girls – a startling omission.
But the sisters did say they fully support the Equality Act (2010) Single Sex Exemptions “to deliver provisions for women and girls, including trans women”, and that they were committed to the future protection of vital services that “support and protect vulnerable women and girls, including trans woman”. (My emphasis).
So, instead of acknowledging that there is a conflict of rights between protecting women’s single sex services and the provision of services for trans women, the STUC Women’s Committee has come down clearly on the side of the influential trans lobby.
The same tension arose at the 2024 Women’s Conference, at which a motion by Aberdeen Trade Union Council included support for the ‘principle of women’s sex-based rights’ (motion 26).
Objecting to this phrase, a statement by the Women’s Committee asked for the motion to be remitted.
The Committee recognise that the discussion about who should have access to single sex services has evolved over the last couple of years and has become extremely polarised, and in some cases toxic.
… Motion 26 aligns with Women’s Committee policy and asks us to “affirm [our] support for single sex provisions in the Equality Act. However, it also asks conference to “affirm [our] support [for] the principle of women’s sex based rights.” It is those final words that have prompted this statement. Taken as it is written it can be argued that this is not trans-inclusive, not related to the Equality Act and is a separate point of principle. We are therefore unable to support the motion in totality and would ask Aberdeen TUC to remit the motion…
We note that trans-inclusive policies have been agreed following debates at the STUC LGBT+ Conference, the STUC Women’s Conference and STUC Congress. Further we fully support the STUC General Council statement that “the greatest threat to women and girls safety and spaces is abusive men and the patriarch” …
Other motions carried at the 2024 STUC Women’s Conference include ‘Trans Rights are a Feminist Issue’ (motion 22) This stated:
…Conference believes that gender recognition reform and the right to self-identify are important feminist issues. Defending the rights of trans women is an important part of the fight against misogyny and strengthens the rights of all women…”
And called on STUC Women’s Committee to work together with the STUC LGBT+ Committee to ‘organise a trans rights are a feminist issue event celebrating trans people and trans rights’. Another motion titled ‘Far Right Targeting of LGBT+’ (motion 24) stated:
… Conference recognises: that those sections of the feminist movement that describe themselves as ‘gender critical’ are using the issue of violence against women to perpetuate a belief that the trans community offers a space for predatory men. This includes a fixation on women-only spaces which serves to skew the discussion and disproportionately represents trans women as would-be abusers of already vulnerable women…
Trans Rights at Work: A Guide for Trade Unionists on Trans Equality
The STUC position on gender self-identification is set out in its Guide for Trade Unionists on Trans Equality, which is ‘designed to be a practical tool for union reps and activists to further support trans workers/members and how trade union reps can help to embed trans equality and inclusion at work’.
The guide includes a Trans Equality Model Policy, which reps are encouraged to use ‘to negotiate and embed trans equality policies at their respective places of work, and within their own trade unions’. This wrongly advises:
Trans people are entitled to use single sex facilities in accordance with their gender identity. For non-binary people, this might mean using gender-neutral or accessible facilities or using a combination of different facilities. However, trans people will never be required to use gender neutral toilets unless they wish to do so.
A checklist of ‘negotiating points’ for Union reps include the following:
- All workers are trained and informed about transgender people’s rights – that harassment and discriminatory behaviour will not be tolerated.
- All workers are treated as the gender or genders in which they live and work, irrespective of their legal sex.
Exposure to legal challenge and financial risk
The Supreme Court ruling has put beyond doubt that employers must provide single-sex facilities on the basis of biological sex, not gender identity. This is spelt out in the interim update issued by the EHRC following the judgment. The EHRC has also recently highlighted the 1992 Workplace Regulations that mandate single-sex facilities in places of employment.
Any employer following advice based on the STUC guide should clearly now assume that they will be exposed to legal challenge and financial risk.
STUC relationship with Scottish Government
For the most part, the STUC is aligned with the Scottish Government on sex and gender.9 In a gesture of appreciation, on opening this week’s Annual Congress, First Minister John Swinney thanked the STUC for its work on equalities and advocacy for LGBT+ rights, which he painted as part of resisting far right ideologies.
I invite you to work with me to ensure that Scotland is a country that will be able in the years to come to say that we successfully resisted the far right ideologies that are spreading increasingly around the world, and that we acted to protect the democratic characteristics and the democratic values that have served Scotland well and have brought our society to where it is today.
The STUC has always been, in part of that work, a crucial voice in promoting equality across Scottish society, in and out of the workplace. Your advocacy for Scotland’s LGBT community has been vital in driving the progress that we have made as a country. Let me take this opportunity to reaffirm my government’s commitment to LGBT rights, and specifically the rights of trans men and trans women in our society. I know that for trans people, there will be feelings of enormous uncertainty and anxiety at this moment in time, but I am determined to fulfil my obligation, which I took on when I became First Minister, that I will act as First Minister to protect the rights of everyone in Scotland today, and that includes workers.
First Minister John Swinney, 28 April 2025
Scottish Government funding
The STUC has previously faced criticism in relation to its dependency on Scottish Government. Leaked documents indicated that the STUC received around 60% of its income from government in 2017, far exceeding the contribution of membership fees. This proportion increased to 63% in 2018. The STUC does not publish its full accounts10, so it is not possible to update these figures.
At the time, Liberal Democrat MSP Alex Cole-Hamilton stated that the Trades Union movement “should always be utterly independent both of management and of Government” and “to learn that the STUC gets the majority of funding from the Scottish Government puts that independence into question”. He also commented that “seemed to have pulled their punches recently over criticising the SNP Government on things like the austerity proposed by the Growth Commission.”
As shown below, the STUC has received over £2.5 million per annum from 2015/16 onward, an increase of around a million compared to each of the three previous years. The bulk of this has been awarded for the Scottish Union Learning project, with smaller sums under the headings of Fair Work in Action, Just Transition Capacity Grant, Unions into Schools and Cyber Resilience.
Scottish Government funding to the STUC, 2012/13 to 2024/25
Source: Scottish Government Freedom of Information response. See here and here. Includes an additional £925,000 in 2020/21, 2021/22 and 2022/23 to support sectoral challenges resulting from COVID-19.
Conclusion
The STUC has 44 affiliated Trades Unions and 19 affiliated Trades Union Councils (see page 67). It represents more than half a million workers in Scotland, more than half of whom are women. It does substantial work on practical issues affecting women as workers, as it should, as a matter of discharging its basic duties. That does not, however, put its internal arrangements for enabling women to organise and be heard within its structures, and its approach to recognising the relevance of sex to women’s experiences in the workplace, beyond scrutiny.
Votes for Women
As the Women’s Committee approaches its centenary, neither the Committee nor the Women’s Conference are represented at Congress, have reserved seats on the General Council, or can put forward motions to Congress.
Just two weeks ahead of the 2025 Annual Congress, the Supreme Court upended existing STUC policy, in one of the most significant rulings for women’s rights in decades.
The STUC has thus far failed to get to grip with this. STUC General Secretary Roz Foyer (the first woman to be elected to the post) has stated that she does not agree with the ruling, which she thinks is “hugely problematic”, and Annual Congress has passed an emergency motion criticising the ruling.
This position is simply not sustainable. For many women members of trades unions the clarity brought by the Supreme Court will be welcome. There is an opportunity here for the Women’s Committee to reconsider its current position, and put its weight behind proposals that recognise women as a group who share rights, needs and interests based on their sex. Equally, it is a chance for the STUC to develop policies that not only treat the rights of women, as a sex, as equally important to those of other groups, but recognise that the law requires this.
Notes
- Only women who are already delegates to the Scottish Trades Union Conference may be members of the Women’s Committee, with up to 16 members in the Trades Union section and up to two members in the Trades Union Council section. ↩︎
- Accessed 1 May 2025. ↩︎
- Unions with up to 10,000 women members are entitled to nominate one woman to the Women’s Committee. Trade unions are permitted to nominate additional women to the committee for each additional 10,000 women members, up to a maximum of three nominees. Trades Union Councils can nominate one woman for the trades union council seats on the STUC Women’s Committee ↩︎
- Votes are cast by delegations to the conference. Each delegation receives a ballot paper and can vote up to a maximum of 16 candidates from the trade union section and 2 from the Trades Union council section. ↩︎
- NASUWT and EIS are both teaching unions. Community, GMB and Unite have a broad-based membership across a range of employment types. ↩︎
- The STUC Youth Workers Committee dates back to 1938. The Black Workers Conference was first established in 1995, followed by the Disabled Worker’s Committee in 2004. The LGBT+ Workers Committee is the most recent, established in 2012. ↩︎
- If passed, the amendments would have allowed the Women’s Committee to send up to six delegates to Congress, entitle the Committee to six votes at Congress, and to submit up to three motions at Congress. ↩︎
- Under Rule 6, 28 seats are reserved for the affiliated Trades Unions, of which 12 must be women (the remaining are ‘open’. Two seats are allocated to the Trades Unions Council (one open and one woman’s seat). A further two seats are respectively allocated to ‘Young workers’, ‘Black Workers’, ‘Disabled workers’, and ‘LGBT+ Workers’. For each of these, one seat is ‘open’ and one is reserved for a woman who self-identifies with the respective characteristic (Black, Disabled, LGBT+). ↩︎
- The STUC submission to the Scottish Government 2018 Review of the Gender Recognition Act supported lowering the minimum age to 12 years. ↩︎
- As far as we have been able to establish, only unaudited abridged accounts are published for a training arm (S.T.U.C. Training Limited (previously Lomond Ventures Twenty Two Limited)) that spends just under £1m a year, and accounts for a dormant company. ↩︎